So yesterday Enron founder and Bush pal "Kenny Boy" Lay was convicted by a Houston jury of every count brought against him for fraud and conspiracy.
Of course, Lay was much more than one of the president's Texas buddies. As the Center for Public Integrity notes, "The $550,025 that the Enron Corp. gave Bush over the years makes it his No. 1 career patron."
Yet at last night's Bush-Blair press conference (transcript here), not one reporter thought to ask President Bring 'Em On about the verdict, about his relationship with Lay, about the thousands of lives ruined by what was the Hurricane Katrina of corporate financial scandals, or about whether he regrets accepting more than a half-million dollars in tainted campaign money from Lay and his crooked energy industry shell game.
Not one reporter. And it doesn't matter if the event ostensibly was about Iraq. In fact, "Stretch" interrupted the Iraq yukfest (note repeated references to laughter in the transcript) to ask a question about Treasury Secretary John Snow, so don't tell me it couldn't have been done.
Before we give "Stretch" too much credit for veering from the script, however, look at his question:
Q: Has (Snow) given you any indication he intends to leave his job any time soon? And related to that, Americans -- the macroeconomic numbers are indeed good, but many Americans are concerned, increasingly concerned about rising health care costs, cost of gasoline. And does that make it hard for your administration, Treasury Secretary Snow and everyone else, to continue to talk up the economy?
Translation: "Do the irrational fears of uninformed Americans interfere with your efforts to communicate the great economic progress we've made under your wise and inspired leadership?"
Or put another way: "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"
Another stellar performance from the White House lapdogs.
--- Cross-posted on Bloginàge ---